Rebuilding CMS Platform to Enhance Customer Experience

CMS Rebuild Rebuilding the CMS Platform

Rebuilding CMS: Summary The existing CMS (Contact Management Service) which facilitates B2B processes has unfortunately come to the end of life support and is now operating at risk. Due to changes in processes and the customer base over time, the functionality is no longer fit for purpose and is creating a poor customer experience. The CMS processes will be rebuilt to resolve customer Painpoints maintaining customer involvement and engagement to help deliver a modern, usable and reliable platform. There are four key areas: Customer Engagement Pain Points & Requirements Detailed Analysis on Requirements Suitable solution Identified Maximise Customer Benefit To deliver this strategy, we will enhance the Customer Experience, simplify our current technology landscape to deliver benefits to all participants who use the CMS platform and the ability for re-use in the future.

CMS Rebuild: Whats our vision? Bringing customers on the journey is paramount for a successful project that will be rebuilding the existing processes, ensuring that impact to customers are understood and creating an environment for successful adoption. Customer Engagement Using Agile methodology we will receive continuous feedback from customers on the solution and will be able to adapt. Collaboration with customers throughout design will ensure the foundations for a successful delivery. Detailed Analysis / Design The solution has to meet customer requirements, be adaptable to change, efficient to run and reliable. Solution Identified Some elements and functionality of CMS has resulted in many painpoints for customers over a number of years. Delivering a solution that automates some of the manual inputs and streamline processes will reduce effort for customers, increase right first time and reduce overall cycle time Maximise Customer Benefit

What are the options? Option 1 Platform as a Service Xoserve will take a subscription with Correla who will provide the up-front investment in the development of a product that delivers the same scope of requirements as Option 2 and as identified in customer workshops. The subscription also provides for an identified capacity for modest enhancements under the annual subscription cost. This delivery will follow an agile methodology and the product will be developed and iterated upon through sprints with high customer input and feedback, including customer testing, allowing the solution to be adapted to provide the best outcome for customers. Option 2 DSC Project A standard DSC initiated Xoserve project will be undertaken to deliver the chosen solution architecture working alongside a delivery partner. This route will require DSC customers to fully fund the development and subsequent operate costs for the solution thereafter. This option will be baselined at the end of design with any required change going through a change management process. Option 3 Do Nothing This option is not recommended as the current CMS System is out of support and the longer it remains out of support the greater the risk of a catastrophic failure. This option would also restrict the number of improvements that are required to multiple processes that are currently in CMS and are a frequent pain point across the customer users.

Recommended Option Option 1 The delivery timeline will be dependent on the velocity of change and ensuring each release, and the processes and functionality within them, are of high quality and right first time. The sequential order may depend on several factors criticality, complexity, customer impact etc. Any change is tightly managed and re-prioritised by the product team working with stakeholders and it is expected that high involvement from those stakeholders will continuously shape the product. The delivery method allows flexibility for customers to work closely with the delivery team to course correct through the development cycle. Throughout the build lifecycle there can be close collaboration to agree the priority and scope of releases and the requirements within them, providing high visibility and supporting adjustment of the features and design as the product development progresses. Further elaboration of processes can occur concurrently as required ensuring the configuration of the processes in the new tool is as up-to-date as it can be at release point. A user interface will be created with customers and will have a dedicated UI/UX team to build this collaboratively during the CMS workflow tool creation. In addition, the core tool UI/UX will continue to evolve over time after initial release with functionality added through ongoing releases based on requests for change (at an agreed level) all as part of the subscription cost. However, any subsequent, larger industry wide or customer specific changes requiring integration, customer specific reporting or changes in support of UK Link Major Releases can be accommodated through a funded Change Request. We are proposing 100 man days of change but with a limit on how many days can be called off each time to enable small enhancements to be delivered. It is intended that the subscription shall continue with Xoserve and feed Xoserve s systems regardless of who were to operate the DSC+. Once all required processes have been implemented, decommissioning of the current CMS solution will take place. The below table captures the differences for both options as a comparison: Activity Flexibility to adapt design during development cycle Option 1 - Platform as a Service Yes small enhancements/improved UI throughout build phase Option 2 Traditional DSC No. Requirements baselined at detailed design Scope changes/new requirements during development lifecycle Can be swapped in exchange for other functionality in the backlog equal in size, funded directly, or funded through adjusted subscription Funded by customers through Change Requests Technology maintenance Subscription costs include cost of operation and technical upgrades e.g. for out of support components Minor enhancements, small level of change included in subscription price Run costs include only the cost of operation and excludes technical upgrades e.g. for out of support components All change would require customer funding Minor Changes & Enhancements post go live

Customer Painpoint Traceability Reduce invalid Contacts and investigation time; Reduce wasted customer effort; Ensure un-accepted Contacts are visible to customer and easily rectified; reduce loss in customer efficacy/knowledge caused by staff turnover Auto population of forms; flexible uploading and downloading; improved search facilities, alerting and exception processing New user friendly UI/UX Ensure all required processes and activities are improved and continue to support, reduction in effort and processing times; support meeting the UNC obligations Key existing processes integrated into UK Link SAP system in new workflow engine 15 existing CMS processes Alleviate issues within current manual processes that have high number of customer pain points; and enable the efficient management of another process following major change requirements as a result of a mod 3 New Significant Enhancements Found Meter; Theft of Gas (MOD); Swapped Addresses added to CMS functionality Allow all affected/involved stakeholders to see progress; provide greater clarity and increase understanding of process lifecycle; reduce greatly offline requests for updates (emails/phone calls); increase identification of potential blockers to efficient resolution Improved workflow with contact tracking through process Process automation and configurable workflow to support simpler change and tracking of processes; visibility of where contacts are in process Enable identification of support/training needs for customers; improved visibility of issues at customer or industry level; support all parties to better manage resource and pro-actively plan Process metrics with Dashboards and metrics Improved MI across contacts and processes via Dashboards and metric monitoring Reduce lifecycle times of contacts/reduce delays where contacts within organisations are unknown; easily resolve issues; remove blockers to resolution; improve decision making; greatly reduce or eradicate offline communication (email/telephone); provide an audit to better resolve any disputes Ability for communications to be linked within contacts and visible to all stakeholders; fully audited Communication enhancement

BP22: CMS Rebuild: What customer outcomes are we aiming for? Requirement Traceability External BRDs published Dedicated focus groups to discuss requirements in low level to allow customers to attend specific value add sessions Enhancements CMS DSG to continue Industry governance Solution approved at CoMC & ChMC Detailed Design Customer Experience Identify process improvements to reduce SME effort Process Improvements Identified Customer s training needs identified to ensure training is fit for purpose and assist with successful Market Trials Customer TNA completed (Improved RFT, Cycle Times, Customer Effort outcomes) Requirements clearly articulated to ensure fully understood Documentation of requirements Customer engagement continued, ensuring customer readiness and to remove any bugs to ensure a smooth transition into go live Market Trials Dedicated focus groups to discuss requirements in low level to allwo customers to attend specific value add sessions Specific DSG Increased RFT, Cycle Time and Customer Effort Delivery of CMS Rebuild Customer Experience Levels BP21 (2021/22) BP22 (2022/23) BP24 (2024/25) BP23 (2023/24)

CMS Rebuild: Associated Costs Investment Funding Options Option 1 - Platform as a Service ( m 2021/22 Prices) Subscription Savings from decommissioning old CMS Total Spend Category MTB MTB Year 1 2022/23 Year 2 2023/24 Year 3 2024/25 Year 4 2025/26 Year 5 2026/27 Total 0.6 1.5 1.5 0.4 1.1 1.5 0.4 1.1 1.5 0.4 1.1 6.6 1.2 5.4 0.6 1.5 Option 2- DSC Project Delivery( m 2021/22 Prices) Build & Programme Costs New CMS Run Costs Savings from decommissioning old CMS Total Spend Category Investment MTB MTB Year 1 2022/23 2.8 Year 2 2023/24 1.3 0.6 Year 3 2024/25 Year 4 2025/26 Year 5 2026/27 Total 4.1 4.2 1.2 7.1 1.2 0.4 0.8 1.2 0.4 0.8 1.2 0.4 0.8 2.8 1.9 INVESTMENT FUNDING SPLIT % NTS GDNs iGTS Shippers BP21 (2021/22) BP22 Option 1 BP22 Option 2 * N/A N/A 0% N/A N/A 45% N/A N/A 5% N/A N/A 50% Note BP22 Funding split for Option 2 is assumed to follow the same split as the CMS investment line in BP22. Note the above costs do not imply that the preferred option will take longer to deliver, the difference is that with agile the milestones are not set in stone and can be flexed to support the right outcome, so it will agreed with customers to deliver the right outcome at the right time, understanding that customers want to see benefit as soon as possible and Correla are incentivised to deliver benefit asap in order to commence subscription charges.